Faith and Understanding
by Lethe Laguz
Summary: Ginny’s always trying to understand Luna.  But who can really understand Luna Lovegood?  GinnyLuna gen fluff.


Title: Faith and Understanding

Summary: Ginny's always trying to understand Luna. But who can really understand Luna Lovegood? Ginny+Luna gen fluff.

Notes: Harsh critiques are loved, as this is un-beta'd. .;

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When Ginevra Weasley's older brothers refused to sit with her on the train first year, she was left wandering the crowded corridors with a bit of fear and a lot of anticipation. As compartment after compartment proved to be full or simply undesirable (_There's an opening—oh, wait, those are fourth year Slytherins, no way in Hogwarts I'm sitting with _them), she started to wish that her mother hadn't taken such a long, wet time kissing her goodbye.

Finally, she spied a compartment that seemed to be perfect—there was only one occupant, a small girl who was probably a first year, and who looked up with bright-eyed interest when Ginny entered. Ginny hesitated from the threshold—she could see why the girl was alone: With her disheveled appearance and assortment of odd jewelry—were those miniature potatoes in her headband or…?—the girl looked more alien than human. Added to that, the look on her face made her appear constantly confunded, and she was holding a copy of the Quibbler in her hands, a magazine which seemed familiar but which she got the nagging feeling didn't have a reputation for proven truths.

"Er…." was about all Ginny could think to say.

"You think I look too weird to sit with, don't you? Everybody else has so far." The girl smiled serenely.

Ginny didn't know if it was the shock of hearing such a blunt statement, or the way the girl smiled when she said it, but a stab of pity caused her to ask, "Um, I was just wondering if any of these seats were taken." She waved a flustered and unnecessary hand over the compartment.

The girl smiled again. "Well, the one I'm sitting in is." Ginny blinked. When this seemed to be the only thing the girl had to say, Ginny coughed and tried again.

"Er, so none of the other ones are? Like, you aren't saving them for any friends…?"

"You really think I look like someone with friends?" The girl beamed. "Why, thank you, you're ever so kind!" Ginny was baffled. She couldn't tell if the girl was being sarcastic or what. When, in her confusion, Ginny stayed rooted to the spot, the girl leaned back and stopped beaming, her face cast with a dreamy smile that looked almost…downcast compared to her previous wide-eyed grin. "You were just asking so you could have an excuse to not sit with me, weren't you?"

The truth of the statement caused both a stab of guilt and another bite of shock that the girl was both so accurate and blunt. Ginny wondered if perhaps the girl could read minds, and indeed, the girl's pale eyes almost looked like they were doing just that. She tried to swallow the nervousness this caused and instead focus on the guilt, which compelled her to sit down opposite of Luna. The train rolled on, taking their silence with it.

"So, um, what's your—"

"Name?" The bright, genuine smile returned. "You're the first person to ask! It's Luna. Luna Lovegood…" The dreamy look again. "Unless you were actually about to ask something a mite ruder?"

"No, no, not at all, that's what I was going to ask…er, your name that is…" Ginny kicked herself mentally. Sitting stuttering pathetically in front of a strange girl in a compartment they were otherwise alone in was NOT how she had expected to start her school year. Determinedly, she straightened up and cleared her throat. _Confidence_, she reminded herself. "I'm Ginny. Ginny Weasley."

"And now you're the first person to introduce yourself to me!" Luna looked ecstatic. In her pity, Ginny felt more determined than ever to get a good conversation out of this trainride. Squirming, she felt somehow self-conscious around this girl, who, except for leaning forward whenever Ginny said something to her, hadn't twitched a muscle. She had a sort of moon-like grace about her, despite her aura of oddness.

_She's sort of like a rabbit, _Ginny thought, and it was true.

Realizing that she was staring (although she wasn't inclined to feel rude, as Luna had been staring right back), Ginny cleared her throat again and gestured to Luna's apparel.

"Um, your clothes are really…unique. Are those real potatoes or…?"

"You're making fun of me."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are. And yes, the potatoes are real. Daddy says they're one of many things that keep Nargles away, so…"

Ginny didn't know what Nargles were and wasn't inclined to ask. There was a bit of silence, then she tried again. She pointed to the magazine that Luna had once again begun to read.

"My dad's read the Quibbler, I think…"

"My dad's the editor," Luna said immediately—she didn't skip a beat despite her unfocused look, and between her bright eyes and keen accuracy, Ginny decided that this was an alert girl. "And you're just lying to make me feel better. Nobody reads the Quibbler." After seeing the girl's wide-eyed persona, the serene half-smile looked almost patronizing and annoyed.

"Well, my dad does," Ginny said with a bit of an angry voice—the girl was leaving the realm of blunt truths and beginning to just name off pessimistic assumptions. It was ceasing to be sad and beginning to be annoying. That confident tone of voice, as if Luna was speaking constant truth, sounded pompous when the girl was wrong. "It's sort of rude, you know, pretending you know everything when you really don't." It came out of her mouth before she could stop it.

Luna's face was harder than ever, though she was still smiling. For once, she seemed at a loss for words, and made her expression extra dreamy as if to compensate. In what seemed like a complete nonsequiter, Luna said, "I want to be in Ravenclaw."

Ginny was caught off guard once again. "…I want to be in Gryffindor, but what's that got to do with anything?"

"Ravenclaws," Luna (or "Looney," as Ginny's mind had dubbed the girl) continued more loudly, as if she hadn't heard Ginny, "always speak the truth."

"That's stupid," Ginny said scornfully. Was this girl really so naïve? Was such naivety possible? Was it all an act and Ginny was just being fooled with? "Nobody's right all the time."

"My daddy," Luna said louder than ever, "was a Ravenclaw." And as if that settled it, she leaned back and returned to her reading, humming mildly.

Ginny sat confused, trying to put two and three together. 'Ravenclaws are always right.' 'Daddy was a Ravenclaw.' So then…'Daddy's always right?' She had vague remembrances of her father talking about the Quibbler and how it was rarely correct, but unique in it's certainty that it was, indeed, speaking the truth, which her father said put it above those journals that started with actual vague truth and purposely spun webs of lies.

Ginny decided to say none of this, and instead decided to use Luna's statement as an opening for more conversation. "So, uh, your daddy's always right then?" Luna nodded.

"You don't believe me," she said, but that wasn't what Ginny had wanted to ask and she ignored it.

"Well, what about your mum?" All at once, Luna stopped humming, stopped the way she had begun to kick her shins against the seat as though skipping. The smile on her face was almost the shape of a C, and her eyes looked almost like puddles of water, they were so pale and unfocused.

"Mum's dead. She died sixteen months ago."

Ginny felt horribly awkward and almost a bit guilty, thinking of her large family and how she'd dubbed the girl 'Looney' in her mind and how she almost hadn't sat down. "Oh," she said. "I'm sorry…"

And with Luna, that was all that could be said.

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As the sky darkened, the train rolled to a stop and everyone got off. As they walked down the corridors, Ginny couldn't help but notice the way Luna was constantly either jostled or avoided. The girl continued to skip, and hummed louder if anything. On the way to the castle, Luna commented on the pretty horses pulling the carts, even though it was very clear that there were none there. Nobody but Ginny sat in the same cart as her. It started to rain. Luna's Quibbler got soaked. She hummed.

And Ginny decided then and there that Looney Lovegood was going to have her first friend.

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Being friends with Luna Lovegood was a more complicated process than Ginny had anticipated. The girl's oddities were never-ending—Ginny thought it sort of interesting to try to fit the almost alien pieces together to create the whole of her friend, but this proved an impossible task. Luna was as withdrawn and confusing as she was strange, and despite her dreamy naivety she had this sort of cold logic about her if you dug down a little. Despite this, she was bright, wide-eyed, and clever, and all of this made her charming in her own, unique little way.

Ginny was the only person who ever spoke to Luna. All of the rest of the girls kept huddled in their little groups, whispering and pointing at the strange girl, sniggering occasionally, but never coming nearer than they could help. The boys were less subtle and outwardly picked on her when they weren't ignoring her completely. There wasn't a day that went by that Ginny _didn't _find some new reason to feel ever-increasing pangs of sympathy for Luna. There was, for instance, the day that Luna's shoes mysteriously 'disappeared,' a group of laughing boys eventually chucking them back. Luna had just smiled serenely and thanked them for returning the shoes, an act that caused the boys to go into a fresh round of laughter and Ginny to head-desk in pity.

As time went on, Ginny noticed a significant difference in the way people were treating her for hanging around Luna. She had some good friends, sure, but the majority seemed to want to steer clear of anyone affiliated with the strange girl. As she got picked on or ignored more and more, Ginny got uncharacteristically more and more withdrawn, which was not helped by the presence of the famous Harry Potter, whom she couldn't stay in one room with for more than three seconds without blushing and running away. "Ginny, _not talking_? Has the apocalypse come?" her brothers would say in astonishment, and she'd just stick out her tongue childishly and stomp away.

Hermione, whom Ginny had found to be very nice despite her picky nature, encouraged Ginny to be more outgoing and confident. _"Tell them that Luna's your friend with your head held high." "Don't just run away." "If you want Harry to notice you, you have to be yourself more." _Ginny found herself confiding in Hermione more and more, but most of all she confided in Tom Riddle. After her terrifying experience with Riddle's diary, she was more introverted than ever. It didn't suit her to be this shy and her brothers had stopped picking on her and had instead grown worried. The summer after her first year, her mom went into a feeding frenzy, fussing over her. As time went on she got a bit more cheerier, giggling more, and color returned to her cheeks, but she couldn't pinpoint a single source for this except for her group of supporters and own inner strength.

Meanwhile, Luna stayed her usual self. Ginny recalled that day on the train and tried to stifle the urge to call her "Looney" Lovegood, but inside her mind, it just slipped out from time to time. Being around Luna often ended in Ginny feeling guilty or annoyed or confused or a combination of all three, and there were days, at first, when she wondered why they were friends—but as the months went on, she grew to admire the girl's strength of character and humorous antics.

One day in Charms class, Luna had performed particularly well. Her head of house praised her extensively while the class looked resolutely away with annoyed looks on their faces. Ginny sent a little glare at them all and walked up to her friend with a wide grin, telling her she'd don great. Later that class, she got the usual odd looks accompanied by the usual comments about her talking to _Luna Lovegood_ of all people.

Ginny thought of Hermione's pep talks (_head held high)_, gave them a defiant look, and confidently said,

"Looney Lovegood is my friend."

Roars of laughter answered. Ginny realized her mistake almost at once—she had never, ever, called Luna by that awful name out loud, only in her head…but now she'd said it, and it was too late, and the name would no doubt spread throughout the school, and everyone would have a new horrible thing to call Luna and it'd be all her fault. She turned to find Luna not looking angry, but having her most dreamy, spaced out look on her face, turned directly toward Ginny. Ginny would have preferred a glare, a shout, anything, but not this look that seemed indifferent to everyone else and icily betrayed to her, the only one who knew Luna well enough to know the difference. They both stood rooted to the spot, staring at each other. The horror and shock on Ginny's face was not mirrored on Luna's, but Ginny knew that she felt it. Luna had endured much worst taunts, but never from anyone she considered a friend.

Luna smiled vaguely and walked away. Hermione's voice still echoed in Ginny's mind. _Don't just run away. _ Ginny thought about how Luna probably wanted friends more than anything. She thought about how walking dreamily away from everyone's taunts wouldn't make Luna any friends. And she found herself following Luna and grabbing her by the arm and whispering Hermione's words in her ear, "_If you want people to notice you, you have to be yourself more," _which surprised her when it popped out of her mouth because she couldn't think of anything more like being one's self than wearing radish earrings. Pain flashed on Luna's face. It was the kind of pain that anyone could see, could tell was there. The kind she never showed.

Then it was gone. When she turned, she was still walking away. People were ignoring this brief scene and still chuckling and chanting "Looney Luna." Ginny had never felt so lonely.

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Luna was the type that was mad quietly. When Hermione insulted her blind faith or the Quibbler, she got fired up, sure, but after the fact she never treated Hermione any differently, and besides, this was different. Luna didn't seem to be at all effected by the new taunt—indeed, she was pranked on and insulted and ignored on a regular basis anyway, so she probably didn't notice a difference. Somehow, this made Ginny feel several times worse.

Ginny tried to apologize to Luna later that day. "Why are you apologizing?" Luna asked with a dazed smile. "It was a clever name. And besides, I always knew you were only friends with me out of pity. I did ever so appreciate it, though." And she beamed.

If Ginny hadn't thought she could feel any worse, she had been proved wrong. How could someone be truly happy to have only a single friend…out of pity? Was it an act? But that full smile of Luna's had always been sincere…hadn't it? She'd seemed so stricken by Ginny's repeating Hermione's words. How much of Luna Lovegood was real? At what point did the lines blur between the spacy girl that wore radish earrings, the girl whose mother was dead and who got picked on all the time, and the true Luna that Ginny suddenly realized she'd never truly known?

While thinking it through, her feet led her to the empty quidditch pitch to burn some energy. Trying to sort out her thoughts, she flew speed laps, her knuckles white on the broomstick. Lost in her thoughts, she almost tumbled off at the sound of a roaring lion coming from behind her. She screeched to a halt and turned to see Luna, sitting in the stands with her Gryffindor hat roaring on her head, watching Ginny and clapping absentmindedly.

Ginny flew over and dismounted next to Luna, who stood up to greet her. They'd been awkward for a while now, though with Luna's skipping merrily down hallways you wouldn't know it. But Ginny could tell Luna was hurt when Luna had become even more distant than usual, even more watery and not quite solid or sturdy. Even now she looked about to blow away any minute.

_You have to be yourself more_.

Nobody really knew Luna.

"What brings you down here?" Ginny asked, determined to show Luna that there was something more than sympathy behind their now tenuous friendship.

"I came to watch you." Luna's face was still bright. "But you don't have to talk to me just out of politeness. You can go fly more."

"No. I want to talk to you." Ginny was feeling annoyed again. Why was Luna so pessimistic? Did she mean to be, or was she still just positive that what she was saying was true?

"Well, that's ever such a nice thing to say! Why?" Luna looked completely alert now, leaning forward in her seat, her hands planted firmly on the bench beside her. Her feet kicked against the bleachers.

It was an odd question. "'Why?' Because you're my friend, that's why!"

"Really and truly?" But it came out a little quaky despite Luna's normal personality, and Ginny knew that it was all that Luna had been hoping for.

"Yes. Really and truly."

Luna leaned back and her eyes went out of focus. She looked like she was mulling something over. "No, you're definitely just saying that because you're a very nice sort of person and know I want a friend. You think I'm weird."

Ginny lost it. Her knuckles turned white again. "Would you stop saying things like that?! It's no wonder you've no friends, if you won't let anyone get close to you!" Luna looked hurt, but Ginny didn't care. She wouldn't be doing the girl any favors by allowing her to continue living in a dream world. "Why do you always assume things about people? It's rude! And by the way," she added, "if you want to say something, then come out and say it for god's sakes!"

"I do," Luna said in a small voice that had lost all dreaminess. "I always say what I'm thinking. It's one of the things people find weird about me, I think."

"But you don't!" Ginny stomped in frustration. "If you're mad at me for calling you Looney, then just _tell _me! All you're doing is moaning about how nobody likes you. That's not true and it's not the point!"

Luna sat very still for a moment. After a while she said, in an even smaller voice that almost sounded like a whisper, "I'm not mad." And it made Ginny want to cry, because she knew that Luna really wasn't.

"I'm not either," she said. She held out her hand to Luna. "Do you enjoy flying, or…?"

"I'm not very good at it," she smiled, "But I do like it."

It wasn't long before Luna was hoisted up onto Ginny's broom, Luna's arms around the girl that, Ginny hoped, she now knew was truly her friend, as the wind ran past them and played with their hair.

Ginny thought she heard quiet singing coming from the girl behind her.

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After that, they were both more awkward, yet closer at the same time. Ginny thought she heard Luna talking from the heart a few times rather than the head, which made her happy, and Luna was always a fun person to hang out with, being unorthodox and witty.

The other students never gave up their relentless teasing of Luna. Just the thought of some snickering group stealing the Ravenclaw' shoes or trashing one of her homework assignments made Ginny's blood boil, and Luna's never-ending smiles made her heart ache with sympathy and compassion for her friend.

Ginny made sure not to call the other girl "Looney," even in her mind. One day, to her horror, Ginny used the term Looney again, outloud. They were alone, and it was casual, and she apologized profusely, but her body still went numb with guilt.

But Luna just said, "If it's you, I don't mind. You can call me whatever you want." And she turned her copy of the Quibbler so she was viewing it from the side and hummed.

Ginny smiled. She knew this meant that Luna trusted her not to use the term out of spite. Somehow, it felt like Luna's trust made all the difference in the world. After that, she was more lax about using the word herself, though several times harder on anybody else who did. It made her feel oddly possessive of Luna, and though she wished that more people appreciated the girl, it was sort of nice having something special all of her own.

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Ginny often wondered why nobody else could see past the butterbeer cork necklaces to how wonderful Luna really was. She wondered it as she had to stifle her giggles when the rest of her friends were introduced to Luna, who boggled them all with what others would think of as oddities and Ginny thought of as endearing character traits. She'd had to drag them into the cart, but she really wanted her friends to like Luna, and besides, she wanted to sit with Luna on the train too.

She wondered it as Luna laughed at one of Ron's jokes so loudly it made the cart rattle. The sound was as pure as a bird's song. Ginny felt a bubble of affection for both Luna and her brother.

She wondered it when she walked in on Luna in the library, reading a book in the very corner and making little lights float in front of her with her wand. Ginny watched, mesmerized, as the lights hit Luna's face in the semi-darkness, illuminating her smiling features with speckles of color.

She wondered it during the meetings of the DA, when Luna pulled off defensive magic with ease in order to train to fight Voldemort. After feeling a large horse gallop out of her wand, Ginny turned and saw Luna produce a silvery rabbit that hopped nimbly and energetically around the room before coming back to nuzzle Luna on the nose. The rabbit suited her, Ginny thought.

She wondered it more than ever later that year, as she saw Luna stun a Death Eater at the ministry, risking her life to fight evil and save her friends. When Ginny hurt her ankle, Luna was right there next to her holding her up. Ginny had protested weakly before molding her body against Luna's form to stay standing. Luna was her pillar then, a support beam—not only the arm around Ginny's waist, but also the bright, encouraging smile that Luna gave her.

Ginny couldn't imagine why anyone would want to steal the shoes of someone wearing that smile.

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As years had passed since they first met, Ginny fancied that she knew Luna more than anyone else, as possible as it was to know someone like Luna Lovegood, whose brain was almost visibly whizzing with no doubt fascinating things and various observations and theories, all stirring behind her dazed moon-cast eyes. Ginny played guessing games, trying to gauge Luna's reactions, asking her random questions and mentally cheering if she guessed Luna's answer correct. She watched Luna closely, so much so that she began memorizing the girl's fluid movements and the way her wavy hair danced around her shoulders when she walked. Ginny's mind turned the girl who everyone else saw as an outcast into something fun and vivid and alive. It was like trying to solve a puzzle that had tentacles that danced and reached out and grabbed you by the mind and the heart and the soul.

That summer, Luna came to visit. Luna sat on Ginny's bed, staring at the ceiling. Ginny was lying down with her arms under her head. They relaxed and chatted about people at school and quidditch and Mrs. Weasley's cooking and the Quibbler's recent articles. They didn't look at each other, but they didn't need to. Their barely touching fingers and interwoven voices were enough. Both of them could have sung with contentment.

Partly for her own amusement, and partly because she made it a point to try to understand her mysterious friend as much as possible, Ginny decided to play another questioning game. "Luna," she asked, "What's your pet peeve?"

She went through a list in her head of things that made Luna lose her dreamy composure: insults to the Quibbler or her father, people who didn't keep an open mind. But Luna turned to look at her, and smiled in a sad sort of way that looked almost grateful.

"I hate when people pick on me," she said quietly.

Ginny gaped. Her mind raced with images of Luna's always careful composure, the way she always seemed to not care, her constant airy smiles. Had it all been an act? How much of Luna Lovegood had always been an act? She felt like they were back on the train first year, with Luna smiling mysteriously and Ginny lost and confused. Then she berated herself for forgetting that behind the angelic, faraway look in Luna's eyes, the girl was human, and humans were easily hurt. Hadn't that been what Ginny had been trying to convince everybody, that Luna was human? How could she forget such a thing?

"Thank you for trying to get them to stop." Luna's voice was still quiet.

Ginny snapped out of her thoughts and was quick to say, "You don't deserve anything they do to you, you know."

"That's ever so kind of you."

Ginny smiled as she realized that Luna might not have even told her her real pet peeve, but may have just needed somebody to vent to. She liked being that somebody that Luna trusted enough to show how she was really feeling.

"Yeah, well, you deserve it. Kindness, I mean."

Their fingers intertwined. They once again weren't looking at each other, but it didn't matter. They both knew the other was smiling.

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Ginny often got her guessing games wrong. Who could really predict someone like Luna? She seemed above earthly things as much as she seemed to understand them better than anyone.

It didn't matter, though. When Harry asked Luna to Slughorn's party, Luna's smiles were brighter than ever as she bounced around wondering whether she should wear her butter beer cork necklace while Ginny assured her that there wouldn't be any Nargles at the party. Ginny couldn't have been happier for Luna, and so it was all right if she didn't understand the Quibbler's latest theory about the Rotfang Conspiracy.

As they laid in the grass one day in a rare moment of luxurious laziness, Ginny decided to play one last guessing game. Just one last question. And a rather personal one, at that.

"Luna, who's your favorite person?"

She felt the grass tickling her bare feet as the obvious answer entered her mind almost immediately. Luna's father, her most talked about person, the person she believed without question, no matter what he said. They surely had a wonderful family relationship.

But Luna smiled her brightest smile and twitched her nose in that rabbit-like way of hers.

"You are."

Ginny leaned her head back and smiled. She was shocked once again, but that was fine. She didn't think she would ever understand Luna completely--nobody would. The girl was an enigma, bright and mysterious as the moon. But that was okay.

Because Luna was Ginny's favorite person too.


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